


Bloodline

by onamaewa



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: (for a given value of dehumanization when sapient arthropods are involved), Aphrodisiacs, Dehumanization, F/M, Forced Breeding, Implied Mutual Non-Con, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Restraints, Xeno, no beta we die like 99 percent of hallownest, porn with a small amount of plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26783968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onamaewa/pseuds/onamaewa
Summary: In which Pharloom wanted Hornet for more reasons than one.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	Bloodline

**Author's Note:**

> Is this porn? Is this whump? I don't know anymore, but I had a good time.
> 
> Heads-up: there is some discussion of suicide in the section after the line of asterisks (***). That section is basically just some minor aftermath stuff, so feel free to skip it, especially if you're just here for weird spider noncon porn.

"Unhand me _now_ , you--!"

One of the bugs moving her gave the chains around her wrist a sharp yank, and Hornet hissed as the metal cut again into her shell. She twisted and writhed, furiously rattling off a string of insults in Deepnest's tongue, unable to find anything sufficiently foul in her grasp of Pharloom's language to communicate her raw, undying hatred. The binding spells on the chains constricted her entire body with each fresh tug on the chains, until they felt fit to compact her into a crumpled pile of flesh, yet the impulse, the desperate need to resist in any way still left to her, drove her onward.

The attendant bugs forced her against a wall, now, and worked to fasten the cuffs onto hooks along the interior walls of the new, larger cage they'd dragged her into. The metal behind her scraped unpleasantly against her bare back; her cloak had been torn off and cast aside upon her capture, no doubt to relieve her of any tools she might carry to aid in another escape.

Her arms hung raised above her head, and her neck bent at an uncomfortable downward angle to accommodate her horns until one bug, clearly thinking himself clever, wedged them through the gaps in the bars, restraining her to stare forward and up instead. Hornet cried out again, startled and enraged, when the bugs below pulled her legs apart and bound them with a distressing distance left between.

She tried to jerk her head forward, struggling around her the bar over her horns, but another bug pressed a muzzle of wire across her face, pinning her chelicerae and pedipalps against her mouth. "No biting, now," the bug told her, disgustingly smug. "Wouldn't want you causing any more trouble than you already have."

Her mind flashed back to the blur of battle -- the cultists, the onslaught of guards, the foes that just kept _coming_ , wave after wave until they had sapped her strength by sheer numbers, lashing out and biting in a panic as they worked together to pin her down and chain her. Surely, between her needle and her silk, her bite was the last thing they were afraid of? But she could not deny some spiteful pride, if it had intimidated them so deeply. Even if it had earned her nothing more than a glorified gag, and the awful taste of gilded metal in her mouth.

She tried to retort, but the muzzle would not allow her, so she settled for hissing and thrashing at the chains again, pushing at the bindings with what power gleamed within her. As they had before, during her transport to the kingdom, the bindings stifled any attempt to spin her silk, and the solid metal far outclassed what physical strength she carried, least of all after her unexpected defeat.

The cage door creaked open to her left, outside of her limited range of vision, but Hornet could hear the footsteps and chatter of whatever new strangers had approached the cage.

"She's an aggressive sort," a bug was saying, "and no doubt she'll be skittish for some time yet, but the priestesses insisted."

"Aggressive would be putting it lightly!" commented another. "Were it my choice, she wouldn't be eligible for another fortnight at least! Not until we've had chance to work at taming her."

A sigh from the first. "Ah, yes, but the precautions are sound. I've doubts of _success_ in the first round, of course, but so long as she's properly restrained--"

"She's like to lose the first lot from stress alone, really, I don't know what they're thinking," a third added.

"--she'll have a chance, at least," finished the first, calmly, as the group came into view.

All three bugs before her wore identical cloaks of pale silks, almost identical to the cultists who had captured her in the Wastes. Hornet could not be bothered to tell which voice had come from which bug, and resolved to follow the conversation purely by their voices, instead.

"Hm. She's smaller than I expected," said the second bug. "Are we quite certain she's fully grown?"

"The Wyrm's form among bugs was said to be very small," the first pointed out.

The third scoffed. "She looks hardly grown to me. Such a scrawny little thing. She's nearly more horns than body!" The bug laughed, bitter and resigned. "I suppose we'll be learning exactly how hardy her heritage makes her, soon enough."

Hornet squirmed and struggled against the chains again, restless in frustration. All three watched her, impassive, observing. After a moment, one sighed, and stepped forward.

"Well, then." They had thick silken covers for their claws, she noticed, all the way down to the first joints of their arms. "An odd one, but not too much so. Let's get you ready, shall we?"

The bug procured, from somewhere beyond Hornet's restricted field of view, a small vial of clear liquid. Looking her over, they reached in and adjusted something at the side of the muzzle, and suddenly instead of pressing down and in, the wires angled her fangs up and away from her mouth. Swiftly, the bug uncorked the vial and put it to Hornet's mouth, using another hand to prod at her throat and force her to swallow.

"Wh--?!" Hornet sputtered around the contents from the vial, something awful and bitter, and waggled her chelicerae in a fruitless effort to bite the hand now feeding her. "What are you--?"

As soon as the vial was emptied, the bug withdrew it and adjusted the muzzle back to its original configuration, gagging her once more. The rest of her question turned into a garbled shriek of frustration as she coughed again on whatever disgusting concoction she'd just been made to drink.

The bug chittered and hushed her now, rubbing a claw down her cheek.

Hornet must have hung there for several minutes, twitching and fighting in little ways at the binds more from spite than any hope of escape, while the bug quietly spoke to her. She couldn't have cared less about the words, but the tone reminded her of the Midwife's sweet way with words, a comparison which felt frankly insulting -- though whether to herself or to Midwife, she couldn't decide.

In truth, with such a comparison, she should have expected what would come after.

The feeling almost didn't register at first, in her shock, but a second later she came to her senses. When she did, she screeched through the bitter tang of wire in her mouth, redoubled in her fury, as the first bug slipped their claws into her entrances. A sharp smell threaded the air as the silk rubbed rough against her inside, and stoked a heat she fought to smother, unwilling and unwanting.

The bug (the first, she guessed, vaguely) braced a third hand against her abdomen and continued, speaking in low tones as if to soothe a wild animal. "Easy, now, little beast. You'll be grateful for this later." They angled a claw upwards and forced it into her, and she strained against the chains so hard she half expected to faint from the untouching vice-grip of the bindings, but such a mercy was not to be.

Even worse was the way her body responded to it -- despite her own horror at the act, the feeling of something touching her so inspired a perverse sense of pleasure, which left some deeper part of her almost wanting for it to continue. For all her sense of violation and disgust, she found herself wanting something _more_ inside her, something which this bug's claws could not fulfill.

What exactly it was, she did not know. But, as if possessed (as if _infected_ , some part of her thought), she _wanted_ it, almost desperately.

After a moment longer, the bug moved a second claw to do the same at her other entrance. The feeling was horribly right and wrong all at once, and she writhed and bucked under the bug's careful hold, slower, more shaken now, but no less outraged. While the urge to bite whatever was touching her until it curled under her fangs and died did not cease, neither did that awful wanting.

"Feisty," one of the others commented.

The other chirped and huffed. "No surprise there."

When the first bug slowed down to a stop, they turned gentler, almost caressing, and began to carefully daub the inner sides of her legs with their claw-tips. The sharp smell had strengthened, potent and almost compelling. Unsettling, to Hornet, who could not explain why something about it smelt _right_.

In the lull, pulled every which way by arousal and horror and confusion, her mind raced. What would be the goal of this? Why violate her in this way, unless--?

The cage door announced the presence of another group, skittering along into the cage amid the clatter of chains. More cultists, and something else. Hornet watched the two other bugs hurry off to cluster by her side, making room for a small procession of guards.

In the center stumbled a lone Weaver, bound in gleaming chains. A guard tugged on the Weaver's legs to force them to a stop, and Hornet watched for a quiet, horrified moment as they stood there, swaying and silent, until they were nudged again to turn them toward her.

The spider before her, chained and trapped between the guards, stood a little shorter than the bodies of the huntresses from home -- a male, mostly likely, or else only half-grown. Their (his?) body bore no cloak, only a few pathetic scraps of silk still clinging to the chains, like an escape attempt cut short. She could look down on the stranger from here, and if she tried, she could just about lock eyes with his feverish, unfocused gaze.

(The haze and oblivion there reminded her uncomfortably of the infection, but that dull stare was plain and pale, no gold swirling behind it.)

One of the guards prodded the Weaver forward, and he stumbled, eyes not once leaving her. Hornet shivered as he approached, closer and closer, until he stood just below her waist.

So this what they intended, then? To breed her, for her blood of Wyrm and Beast? She had seen the other Weavers left in this kingdom, pinned in place, withering in captivity as little more than endless spools of silk with living creatures attached.

She had thought the silk-harvest the worst fate Pharloom had to offer, other than death, and the latter negotiable. Clearly, her creativity had proven insufficient.

 _How dare you?!_ she tried to shout, shaking in fear and fury, though she knew she'd have no luck.

Hornet flattened herself back against the cage wall as she was approached, but she couldn't say what she hoped to defend herself from. The sight of the Weaver before her brought up another wave of that awful _want_ again, and no matter how she tried to banish it, it would not leave.

After a second of hesitation, the Weaver lifted his chained legs and pressed them against her own, tapping and tilting side to side to some unheard rhythm. The bug standing at her front stripped off their gloves in a quick and practiced motion before stepping aside, leaving the silk draped over Hornet's legs as guidelines, soaked in what she only now could identify as her mating scent.

The Weaver's pedipalps skimmed across her carapace, and she shuddered, unable to hold back. A part of her grappled with an impulse so unfamiliar it almost didn't sound like her own thoughts: the urge to allow this creature into her, to press against him, to let him mate with her by whatever means that might be. She needed it, his gift, to secret away for her eggs, and she would set to readying herself for laying, and she _did not want this_ and yet she did.

She made a sound, almost pleading, through the muzzle. Her claws twitched, as if trying to reach the Weaver without her thought or knowledge.

"Gentle with this one," one of the bugs crooned. Hornet no longer cared enough to tell which was speaking. The Weaver's legs lifted off the ground to touch her own, patting down her sides with his claws, almost careful, but she saw no recognition in his eyes.

They'd done something to this one, clearly. A drug, or a spell, perhaps. (They had clearly drugged her, too, after all, to do this to her.) The Weavers were stubborn, clever creatures, and she couldn't imagine them so obedient without some other influence to temper their minds and wills.

The Weaver's legs danced along her body, and Hornet found herself twitching in sync with them, almost pushing toward them as they approached, and leaning away as they left. She growled through the muzzle again, earning a resurgence of pressure from the bindings, but the urge, the instinct to follow along, ached and pulled at her with worrisome strength through the renewed haze of mating urges.

It was like a dance, almost, and she knew the steps by heart without having ever seen them in her lifetime. The motions grew more difficult to resist. She began to think this was it must have been like for the weak-willed bugs who crossed the wasteland, stripped of memory, scoured of their minds and reduced to animal instinct, yet still with some spark of them inside, struggling to _think_.

The pattern of claws and pedipalps trailed up and down again, lingering and rippling around her abdomen, and then, with a sudden thrust, the Weaver shoved against her, pressing inside both holes.

The trance grew deeper and stronger as he pushed about, until the intensity of it nearly looped back into clarity, and Hornet struggled once more, this time in something barely short of a blind panic as the realization truly set in. The Weaver's legs grappled at her in an unnecessary effort to pin her against the cage wall, continuing otherwise undisturbed, while the bug still at her side made little shushing noises and stroked the side of her mask as if to soothe her.

Some organ inside her contracted and shifted of its own accord, and something moved inside of her, sliding up through her entrances past where the Weaver had penetrated, traveling up into her abdomen with a sickening feeling like swallowing in reverse. Her legs twitched and spasmed under her, still in time with the Weaver's rhythm.

After several long seconds, the Weaver withdrew and settled back onto all his legs on the ground, shivering almost as she was. Hornet could not summon up much more than a shaky hiss to drive him off, as instinct instructed, and something in her hungered now, differently.

The bug beside her prodded at her entrances, and something warm oozed and leaked down her leg. She flinched; the whole space was far too sensitive now, almost painful to touch, and drew forth nothing so much as a soft keening sound from her, almost begging for it to be over.

Her muffled protest turned high and sharp in a new layer of indignation she hadn't realized she possessed when the bug placed a hand under her, between her legs, and used a claw to hook her entrance open and peer inside.

"I suppose she could stand another mating," they reported to the others. "Have the priestesses any others arranged for her today, or only that one?"

 _Please, no others._ Hornet would have called it praying if she considered any of the gods she knew worth praying to, striking down every contrary thought that hungered for more even as they sprung up all around her. _Please, say no._

"Two other males were eligible today," the other bug answered.

The first nodded. "Bring them, then. We'll see how long it takes to reach her limit."

She let out something like the first syllable of a sob, and the bug patted her leg, a false and mocking comfort.

"Hush now," the bug said. "You're doing so well. Such a strong little thing you are."

  


***

  


She ached. She ached and she could not think. Whatever drove her through the worst of the hours had faded, and there was nothing now but her chains, her regrets, a soreness through those tender parts of her, and a dreadful sense of defeat, felt in the fullness of her abdomen and betwixt her legs.

After the last Weaver, the bugs had placed something inside her as a plug -- she had heard of such practice, among other species, though she did not recall any such thing used by her own. The bug that tended to her most, still nameless, had patted her on the thigh and assured her that the sooner she laid, the sooner Pharloom's ruling clergy would be satisfied.

After cutting and stabbing and ensnaring her way through half the kingdom, they hardly needed a test of her merit. Their eyes rested on the future, and the future of Pharloom, it seemed in their minds, lay in Weavers born to her blood.

The cage door rattled, stirring her from her miserable stupor.

"So this is where you've ended up, little spider," a voice called, from somewhere outside her vision. "What a shame."

Hornet twisted a little, trying to look toward the source of the sound. Her voice felt strange and rusted, finally let out of the muzzle for the day, enough to speak. "... Lace?"

"I see they've used you already," said Lace, ignoring her response as she stepped into view.

"I..." Hornet stopped short, tense all over, so brittle she felt on the verge of breaking.

"I tried to help you," Lace told her. Her flippant tone morphed into something darker, almost solemn. "I really did."

"By killing me?"

Lace shrugged. "I can still offer you as much, if you'd desire it."

" _No_..." Hornet choked out, finding some little strength to argue. "I'll not die in this kingdom. I refuse to see it kill me."

A sigh. "Your loss, I suppose." Lace paused, somewhere in the midst of thought. "You don't really think you're going to escape this place, do you?"

"I've escaped before."

"With outside aid."

Hornet growled, low and shuddering. "Then why don't you provide some? If you can kill me, you've surely the power to aid me as well."

"It would be futile. They'll find you again, as many times as they must. You're not a catch they'll let go of willingly, after all."

"Have they broken you, too, to think resistance so pointless?" Hornet scowled. She hesitated to call her reaction _disappointment_ , but the resemblance could not be denied.

Lace laughed. It wasn't her light and airy giggling from their fights, though, not at all -- this laugh was dark and bitter, something that came from too close to the heart for the words that followed it to be anything but truthful.

"Of course they have. What makes you think they haven't?"

With that, Lace turned to leave, but not without one more parting comment.

"I'll leave you to whatever solutions you judge worthy. But know that the only real end to this all is one permanent."

Hornet tried to retort, but no words aligned for her. She hung in dim light and silence as Lace left, and did not remember to struggle for a long time after.


End file.
